The Smart One (19 page)

But when she started researching for Claire’s wedding—oh, the excess! There were photo booths to be rented, personalized match-books and napkins to be had. Caterers sent her sample menus, with wonderful descriptions of bacon-wrapped dates and Boursin-wrapped snow peas. They sent pictures of the food, names of signature cocktails, options for monogrammed cupcakes and chocolate fountains. And that was just the food! There were also blogs of local brides, detailing every step of their weddings. There were forums of angry brides, trashing photographers and caterers and florists. It was a whole new world, and Weezy was fascinated.

Claire called off her wedding on a Monday. Weezy had already arranged to meet with one of the caterers the very next day, and she was too shocked to call and cancel. How do you explain a thing like that over the phone? That morning, she found herself driving toward the offices. She didn’t tell Will where she was going. No, he wouldn’t have understood. He would have picked up the phone and canceled the appointment himself, just said she couldn’t make it, with no explanation. But he didn’t understand. She’d been dealing with Sally Lemons, the owner of Lemons and Limes, for weeks now. They had a relationship, a correspondence e-mailing menus back and forth. She couldn’t just cancel over the phone. That would be extremely rude. And so she got in her Volvo and drove to the office.

She had fully intended to tell Sally in person that the wedding was off. It was the right thing to do, to end this face-to-face. But when she walked into the room, the table was already set with the ivory and taupe linens that they had discussed, and a man handed her a glass of cucumber lemonade. “This is what your guests will be greeted with,” he told her. She took a sip and decided to stay. She could tell Sally later.

And so they ate. They ate pan-roasted halibut with fingerling potatoes, and beef tenderloin with goat cheese medallions. They tried bruschetta and marinated mozzarella. They sampled wedding cakes and pecan diamonds. Weezy left Lemons and Limes, stuffed full and a little guilty. She’d drunk several glasses of wine without meaning to; every time she came close to finishing one, it was refilled right to the top. At the end, Sally had given her a warm handshake, saying how sorry she was that Claire couldn’t make it, that they could do another tasting when the menu was decided, that she’d be in touch to work out the details.

Weezy had sat in her car in the parking lot for almost an hour after the tasting. When she’d stood up to go, she was dizzy and, she realized, a touch drunk. She felt almost giddy, like she’d stolen something, only she hadn’t. It had all been free. Sally had talked to her like she was in charge of something big. She’d treated Weezy with respect and that was nice. The wine was just a bonus.

And that was how, months later, Weezy still hadn’t told any of the
vendors that the wedding was off. She’d told them it was postponed, of course. She had to. The date she had originally given them was looming, and there was no way around that. “You know kids these days,” she’d said. “Their lives are so busy they can’t seem to find the time to get married!” But she still sent a note to Sally every couple of weeks, just to ask about new items on the menu, or to discuss what to do for a guest with a gluten allergy.

And so what? So what if Weezy was planning an imaginary wedding? People did far worse things, and anyway, maybe she’d use this information somehow at some point. Still, if anyone had caught her, she would have been completely mortified. And so, when Will walked into the kitchen and she was on her laptop, pricing out letterpress invitations as opposed to engraved, she slammed her computer shut and sat up straight.

“HI,”
SHE SAID.
She tried to act casual.

“Hello,” he said, and stretched his arms out to the side, which made his shirt pull tight against his round belly. “Just taking a break to get a drink. Don’t let me interrupt.”

Weezy was just the littlest bit annoyed (as she was at least once a day) that Will had a room to work in all to himself, while she was relegated to a built-in desk in the kitchen. When had she agreed to this arrangement? Her desk was often littered with things that people just dropped there, receipts or empty envelopes and sometimes even food wrappers. And there was no privacy with people parading through the kitchen. Will came down several times throughout the day. Of course he was going to interrupt. Why even say that?
Don’t let me interrupt
. It was ridiculous.

“How’s the writing coming?” she asked. This question was a reflex. She asked it so often, with so little real interest. It was like saying, “How are you?” to an acquaintance in the grocery store.

“Good,” Will answered.

“Are you ready for your class today?” This was another pointless question. Will had been teaching the same two classes for the past five years now, and he could do them in his sleep.

“Yep. I’m all set.”

“Mmm. What time are you headed over?”

“I have office hours at four.”

They were silent for a few minutes and Weezy looked out the kitchen window. “The Connors are having some work done on their house,” she said. “I wonder if they’re getting it ready to sell. There’s been people coming and going all day.”

“Huh,” Will said. He half looked out the window, as though he was curious about this, which Weezy knew he wasn’t. Will didn’t really care or keep up on any of the neighborhood news.

It was the mothers that remembered everything anyway. That’s what Weezy had learned after three decades in this house. The mothers knew what was happening in the neighborhood. They knew the history, the scandals, the stories, the transgressions. They were the ones that kept the details straight, that passed information to the new people on the block. They gave the prompts to the fathers—“You know who I’m talking about, the one that got pregnant, no, not the Brennan girl, the other one, the Sullivans’ daughter.”

They knew who had gotten divorced, who was getting divorced, and who would probably get divorced soon. They knew who had cheated and who got the best settlements. And the fathers would always just nod as they listened to all of this, the stories sounding vaguely familiar, or at least more familiar than unfamiliar, like it had been overheard at a picnic somewhere, discussed at a barbecue, or whispered in the kitchen while dinner was being prepared and the kids were in the next room doing their homework.

As the kids had grown up, the neighborhood gossip had slowed down. Everything had slowed down, really. For some years in the midst of it, when the children were growing up, Weezy had spent a fair amount of time talking with the other mothers on the block about everyone’s business. It wasn’t mean-spirited, or at least Weezy liked to think it wasn’t. It was just something to get them through the day, at a time when their days were always so busy—school projects, money worries, shuttling Max to hockey, and grounding Claire. It was all so fast that sometimes it felt like you needed a reminder to breathe.

Weezy and Will used to talk about what they would do after the kids moved out, when they had their own lives and no children to take care of. “We’ll be those crazy old people that buy an RV and drive cross-country,” Will said once. Weezy had laughed. She would be happy with an apartment in the city and a cottage by the shore. They had looked forward to that time, when they could relax and just enjoy themselves. It was still coming, Weezy believed. It was just put on hold for a while.

Ten years ago, if Weezy could have predicted where her children would be at this point, she would have guessed that Claire would be married and maybe even have a baby or two. Martha was harder to guess, but Weezy thought she’d be living on her own, nursing, and enjoying every minute of it. Max was still in school, so for the moment, he was still on track. But who knew? These things could get derailed at any moment. She knew that much.

Sometimes Will got a surprised look on his face when Martha or Claire walked into the room, like he’d forgotten that they lived there now. It wasn’t that he disliked having them there. Sometimes Claire would say something that would make him laugh loudly, a huge, surprising guffaw. And he and Martha enjoyed spending quiet time together, reading the paper in the mornings and drinking coffee. Sometimes he seemed confused by their presence, and sometimes he treated them just as he always had, as if they were still children.

Just the other day, Martha had walked into the kitchen to get some aspirin, and Will said, “You still have a headache? Poor baby.” And something unsettled itself in Weezy, hearing him say that. Martha wasn’t a baby. It didn’t seem right to call her that, to say
poor baby
and pat her on the head.

It didn’t help matters that when the kids were home they seemed to start acting like teenagers again. They left shoes and bags and jackets scattered all around. Glasses were missing from the kitchen, only to be found in bedrooms or the basement. Dishes rarely made it to the dishwasher. The best you could hope for was that they’d get rinsed off and left in the sink. Usually they were just abandoned in the kitchen, on the counter, presumably waiting for a fairy to come and clean them up.

This was not how Weezy had raised her kids. Not at all. She taught
them to clean up after themselves, called them back to the kitchen to clean up the apple and peanut butter snack that was now smeared on a plate. But that was when she was younger and had more energy, when she was able to take the time to yell and insist and ignore the rolled eyes and sighs of injustice. Now, most of the time she couldn’t quite face it, and so she ended up picking up after them, throwing armfuls of possessions back into their rooms, rinsing off dishes, wiping crumbs from the table.

After Weezy had stopped working last year, Will had suggested that they get rid of the cleaning lady. “Should we let Sandra go?” he’d asked, like it was the natural thing to do. He had just left his crumby toast plate, an egg pan, and a coffee cup right in the sink.

“Let Sandra go? Why would we do that? So I can fulfill my life goal of cleaning up after you? Believe me, I do enough of that. Who is it that you think is going to come along and clean up from your breakfast? The elves that live under the sink?”

Will had thrown up his arms and sighed like a martyr. “It was just a suggestion,” he said. He went back to the sink and started cleaning up his dishes.

Sandra came in only once every two weeks now anyway. Did he really think that Weezy would be happy to spend her days scrubbing toilets? Sometimes she didn’t know where he got these ideas. She had remained angry for weeks, and whenever she started to get over it, she’d hear Will saying,
Should we let Sandra go?
and get annoyed all over again.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little bit?” Maureen had asked her.

“No,” Weezy said. “I don’t think I’m overreacting at all. My husband would like me to spend my days dusting and mopping. Maybe that’s what he always really wanted.”

“I think you’re reading too much into this. Will says stuff all the time that doesn’t mean anything. He just said it without thinking, that’s all.”

Somewhere, deep down, Weezy knew that Maureen was probably right. Will said stupid things all the time. She tried to let it go. But
every time Sandra was due to come, and Weezy had to go around the house picking up stuff to make sure that the poor woman could actually get to the vacuum cleaner and dust without tripping over a pair of shoes, Weezy would say out loud, “It’s a good thing Sandra’s coming tomorrow. Look at this place. No one’s picked up a thing in weeks.” She couldn’t help herself. She wanted Will to know that she had better things to do than to be his personal maid.

Once a month, Sandra was allowed to go into Will’s office to clean it. It was disgusting in there. There were Kleenexes on the floor (near the garbage but not in it), dust all around the computer and desk, papers stacked everywhere. And as much as Weezy begged Will to bring dishes down as soon as he was done with them, there was always a glass or two that was left behind. The last time that Sandra was up there, she’d come down holding a coffee mug that had mold growing up the sides.

Weezy was embarrassed and also horrified for Sandra. Even if it was your job to clean someone else’s house, it didn’t mean that you expected to find a cup of mold while doing so. Will hadn’t really understood. “That’s her job,” he’d said. “Sorry, I didn’t know it was up there.” But he wasn’t sorry, and now Weezy was never going to be able to let Sandra back into the office without checking it out herself.

Will was still clunking around the kitchen, and Weezy wanted him to finish up so that she could go back to the blog post she was reading, the one that was all about the personal touches you could add to your wedding—old family wedding pictures, naming the tables after favorite books, designing your own guest book!

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” Will asked. He took out some lunch meat and sniffed it, as if he thought it had been left there to go bad.

“That’s brand-new,” Weezy told him. “I just bought it yesterday.”

Will nodded and grabbed some cheese, bread, lettuce, and mayonnaise and started assembling a giant sandwich.

“Go easy on the mayo,” Weezy said. Will nodded and then moved so that he blocked the sandwich from her view. “I’m going to meet Sharon, from work, in a little bit.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, she said there’s some things she wanted to talk to me about.”

“I hope she’s not trying to lure you back to work.” Will took a large bite out of his sandwich and chewed while standing. This was a habit of his that got more annoying with time. “Sit down,” she was always telling him. “Sit down and chew.” But he insisted on eating standing up, like a teenager or a farmer.

“I’m not sure what she wants to talk about. I told her I’d meet her for a cup of coffee.”

“Sounds good.” Will’s answer came so easily that Weezy almost felt guilty for lying. Almost.

THE FLORIST WAS LOCATED CLEAR
on the other side of the city and it took almost an hour to get there. Sally Lemons had been the one to recommend him to Weezy. “I love working with Samuel,” she’d said. “He’s so creative. A true artist.”